


Clean Your Keys

by SleepwalkingTimDrake



Series: Batfam Bingo 2019 (SleepwalkingTimDrake card) [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Humor, Light-Hearted, One Shot, POV Tim Drake, Prompt Fill, Sleep Deprivation, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Tim Drake-centric, Violence against electronics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 11:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18445580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepwalkingTimDrake/pseuds/SleepwalkingTimDrake
Summary: It was a good idea at the timeBut a bad time to think of good ideas.(Or in other words, Tim should really rethink his position on making decisions 72 hours into a cold case.)





	Clean Your Keys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whistle_Mist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whistle_Mist/gifts).



> Thanks to my dear friend Whistle_Mist for having this insane dream that turned into my longest fic yet, I hope you all enjoy it too! This is also my first entry for my batfam bingo card with Gift-fic!

All things considered, Tim didn’t necessarily hate having to stay up for a case. In fact, most of the time he didn't even consciously decide to. It just happened that way. Dick could say anything he wanted to about it, but Tim didn't see it that way. He was perfectly capable of handling his own limits, and if he passed them in the name of a particularly pertinent case. That is his decision, Dick.

Besides. Tim actually likes his job. Going through case files, working out the connections in a recent murder to a cold case they were never able to close? It's invigorating! Sets his nerves on end.

Tim pushes back on the back against his deck, office chair rolling a good two inches before stopping up short when he halfway ran over the sweatshirt he'd just shucked off. Honestly, Alfred couldn't blame him if he left it on the floor for a bit. Tim was in the middle of an epiphany. He... just hadn't figured out what it was yet.

This genius stuff took a while sometimes, yeah. That's why he's spinning aimlessly in his bedroom right since Dick decided that he was banned from the batcomputer till he'd slept for 6 hours. Dick probably would have made that stipend longer if he'd known Tim had been up 74 hours straight and not 32. But, if Dick wasn't able to figure that out. Tim wouldn't correct him.

Tim was starting to get sick of spinning, and he still hasn't gotten his epiphany yet.

Besides, he wouldn't be able to sleep until he solved this case.

Tim stops spinning.

Catching his heels against the wood, he pulls himself back to his computer, kicking the leftover empty cans from the last time he raided his supply in the Batcave. Alfred probably would find them when he cleaned up later, but if Tim hid a few in different layers of his trash to make it look like he'd had them sporadically since last Thursday Alfred probably wouldn't say anything. Probably.

He pulls his laptop open, tapping his fingers fervently against the keys as the starting sounds play. It wasn't fast enough his mind. The faster he gets to the part of this case where he's actually solving it? The faster he can hide the evidence of his little caffeinated helpers from Alfred. Which need to happen soon. Thus? The tapping.

Besides, Alfred was pretty much omnipotent, so this wasn't gonna be an easy operation here.

Tim freezes, Omnipotent? That... Wasn't right, was it? Omniscient? Omni-Alfred? Whatever. He wasn't Jason.

He was the Tech guy and the de(tech)tive

Oh my god, why hadn't he ever thought of that before?

And Ra's said he wasn't funny. Obviously, Ra's had never seen the one popular Tumblr post he'd made at 2am before never logging back on for fear of Dick finding out he'd used one of Dick's embarrassing dating stories to do it.

Yeah, he wasn't ever getting on that site again.

On the tech front though his computer finally seemed to have gotten the message. As blue light floods the corner of his room.

Finally. It's not like he didn't keep his laptop up-to-date and in-

Tim couldn't help it, he snorts.

-Tip top Tim shape. This feels like a mutiny.

Nothing seems to want him to actually finish this case. It's not like he wouldn't like to sleep, he knows all about those studies, thank you again, Dick. But he can just feel it. He's gonna figure this out any minute.

Tim pulls up the toxicology reports on the victims again. No Mo. there's no similar killing pattern to discern. None of the autopsies show any similarity to past killings.

No copycat killer then.

The victims had all been killed in radically different manors. A few stranglings, Two blunt trauma deaths, one particularly involved stabbing, and a drowning. No consistent method used. No particular clue there. Except for the fact that it was inconsistent.

 

Any minute.

 

In fact, the only reason these particular murders were being looked at together at all was because several of the victims had known each other from work. They were all background actors that had worked on the same low budget, small-time crime and justice shows in the past.

Tim was the one who'd made this connection.

No particularly close group bound, no marital troubles connecting any of them, no evidence of affairs or satanic group molestations that he could find/ And he'd looked, everywhere.

Any minute now.

Blue light was straining his eyes. The contrast from the dark room to the bright computer monitor could cause that. Yeah, he should turn his desk light on so he could keep at this. He couldn't just leave this case half done now. Steph might call him controlling, but Tim preferred to phrase perfectionist. Or artist. Yeah, Tim was an artist of information correlation.

Tim clicked on his desk light.

Frack.

This was... Bad.

Maybe he'd been a little distracted last few days of working on this case, but Tim was pretty certain he never let his computer screen get this gross before.

And now, with the lamplight reflecting across the surface, his computer looked... gnarly.

Grease smears and fingerprints littered the screen. Honestly, it was a wonder he'd been able to read the toxicology reports at all.

And his keyboards. Oh fudge, his keyboards looks like Tim had been performing sacrifices of cheesy chips and Zesti to the PC gods. Crumbs crushed and half stuck under keys like some sick trap from Saw kept some from even going down all the way, and his poor WASD keys, with the Light reflecting from this angle Tim could see the smeared sticky mess that had become his favored letters.

Tim hesitantly poked the W key and was disturbed to find that the sticky mystery substance didn't feel like the dried orange Zezti he was hoping it was.

Oh.

Tim needs to clean his computer.

Tim needs something to clean it.

Cleaning material, where?

Tim gropes at the draws of his desk for a good five minutes before he remembers,

He ran out of baby wipes sopping up coffee off his chair yesterday. They'd been the closest thing to a towel he'd been able to find under pressure.

Wonderful forethought past!Tim. Just great future thinking there.

He... He could just bring it downstairs.

There was sure to be something.

Alfred keeps most of the stronger stuff in the supplies closet off the kitchen.

Right, decision made, Tim grabs his computer and the coffee cups from this morning, last night, whenever the last time he was downstairs and sets out to depart for the kitchen.

New problem, too many things to carry.

Tim paused. He could just leave the mugs, but he might as well clean those too and besides at some point someone is going to cut off his caffeine intake if Alfred alerts them to too many missing mugs. He scans his room and his laundry basket comes into focus.

Perfect.

He dumps his mess into the bin and discovers a the minimally stained towels he'd been looking for the other day when he'd dumped the coffee in his lap.

He probably should have looked there first but oh well. Might as well use them now.

His epiphany should be able to wait for a bit.

\------

When Dick finds him an hour later, he's halfway through scrubbing through the mystery substance. Somehow Tim still didn't know what it was.

Behind him, there was a choked sound.

Tim should probably check on that. But honestly, he was like ninety percent sure that Dick was just making an entrance and if he could just

  
Get.

  
Whatever.

  
This.

  
Was.

  
Off.

  
His computer everything would be better.

Tim turns the little nozzle for more heat, and when the temperature rose, he resumed his scrubbing. Watching as rest of the sticky substance run down the drain under his ministrations. His keys were looking so neat.

Man, these Mr. Clean scrubs sure work like magic.

At another noise, Tim turned slightly to see Dick's cautious approach. Eyes wide and his hand twitching as he reached out to pat Tim's shoulder gently.

Aw, that was kind of sweet of him. Normally he bulldozed boundaries.

"Tim, buddy? You feeling okay?"

Tim wanted to frown,  
Why wouldn't he be fine? Obviously he was in the middle of a keyboard epidemic but couldn't Dick see it was clearly being remedied? Maybe he was just being stupid.

Tim doesn't even turn back to his cleaning, better to fix this now. "I'm cleaning my keys."

"Right right... but uh... Why are you using the sink?"

Tim did frown this time.

"Dick, they were dirty, I'm cleaning them."

Dick was just being a dick at this point. Apparently, he'd used up all his brain cells respecting boundaries.

Tim blinks, well that didn't work. He meant to nod. And resumes his cleaning. Huh, the water was pretty gross looking now. Tim pulls at the stopper that was keeping the sink nice and full of the sudsy warm water he'd been using to dunk his laptop under.

"I'm cleaning my keys, Dick, shove off."

"Yeah... I'm going to... I'm going to go find Bruce."

 

\--------------

The one thing that pisses Tim off about staying up for a case is the inevitable need to recover from it.

Tim was in his bed, under his covers, and dressed in a matching pair of Superman pajamas he'd forgotten he had. Alfred, probably.

He blinks and finds he can't.

Groaning he frees an arm from the tight hold of the covers, someone tucked him in, and scrubs at his face. Eye crusties. He definitely was asleep for more than eight hours if he got those.

Definitely his least favorite part of a several-nighter recovery, trying to remember how he'd gotten to bed.

Someone must have drugged him or something, cause he didn't remember finishing his case and the last thing he can think of was-

The resulting scream coming from Tim's room managed to scare the birds off the wires by the road.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this! I'd love to hear what you thought so please comment! I'm experimenting with some deep-dives into Tim's sleep deprived mind. The logical jumps he made here were based on some very interesting conversations with friends about sleep dept decisions, reddit forums and sadly (I've made a lot of my own stupid decisions without sleep) my own experiences haha


End file.
